On the Road

Perhaps it’s not so odd to dream about being on the road while you’re passing days behind barbed wire fences. Prior to my arrest and conviction, I spent a good deal of time on the road. Each day, Monday through Friday, I’d commute sixty-eight miles one way to get to my office. Two or three times each month I’d be on the road to cover trials in various parts of the state. Each month, I’d find myself in an airport flying off for business and later gambling trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

            Then, there were the vacations, the trips each summer to the beach, Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, and the trips tied into business meetings where our children would see the country: Seattle, Park City, Utah, Sun Valley, Idaho, New Mexico, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We’d travel over Christmas to Caribbean Islands or head back to the beach. Travel, being on the road, was a focal point of our family dynamics.

            On the road. How ironic that what I’m going through now is also a road of sorts. It’s ironic that all the travel I had “before,” all those resorts and beautiful vistas, pale blue waters, they were all on a road to nowhere. They were an escape. I was running, running from my failures and self-loathing and guilt over my behavior. Stealing, embezzlement is too sanitized a word, didn’t come easy to me, at least at first. Moving, constantly bombarding myself with travel and work and meals and dice, kept me from thinking about what I’d done. So I focused on the road and it led me right to this prison.

            Recently I’ve been thinking about roads. I’ve wondered where this road is taking me. My life is not where I expected it would be. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe I’m on the road I’m supposed to be on, the road that was meant for me.

            I think often of Paul. Here was a man well regarded in the elite circles of his culture. He moved freely among the well-heeled and intellectuals. He was, by all appearances, a success: Good family, devout, articulate, on the right side of the law. And, he was arrogant, an arrogance built on being so sure you are always right, always justified in your actions. There’s no mention of Paul, before his conversion, ever had any doubts about what he was doing even as the blood of innocent men and women stained his hands. Their crime, punishable by death, was to believe that an itinerant carpenter was the Messiah who had come to set them free and reconcile them to God Almighty.

            So Paul did what any law-abiding leader of his time (and our time it seems) would do. He sought to keep his nation, his people, within the code of conduct handed down generations before. And he did his work well. Still, I asked myself, did he ever have doubts?

            So many days as I’d drive alone along the backroads of Virginia, traveling from rural courthouse to courthouse, it would hit me “You’ll lose everything,” and that strange, small voice in the back of my mind would whisper.  I would be overwhelmed with guilt, and fear, and dread. I’d begin to speak out loud to no one in particular, or maybe it was to someone specific; I’d cry out “God, I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want to go to prison.” The voice would pass, the road would lead me home, and I’d try and forget the voice and my response.           

            It didn’t seem like Paul went through that, which made his trip to Damascus all the more powerful. Paul, it seems, never saw it coming. Paul never thought he was going the wrong way. And then, he left for Damascus.

            Have you ever been lost? You’re driving, sure you know where you’re headed, then get to a point where things don’t add up. You sense this isn’t the right way. And it’s a strange uncomfortable feeling not knowing if you’re lost.

            No one wants to be lost. No one wants to feel the insecurity of not recognizing where you are. Your heart flutters and races a little; your breathing is more rapid; your palms sweat. You go over how you got there. Maybe, you think, you should have turned left instead of right a mile back down the road? But even that doesn’t make sense. It hits you: You are lost,

            Paul knew the way to Damascus. He knew the route and was headed in the right way. Or was he? Sometimes you’re headed the right direction for the wrong reasons. And sometimes you’re headed the wrong direction for the right reasons. Either way, you’ve got to get back on track. Paul needed to go to Damascus, just not for the reason he thought. He was struck down, blinded, laid out on the side of the road. He was bewildered and scared and alone. He had to trust, trust that voice he heard; the voice who called out to him and struck him blind was God, and God would lead him where he needed to go.

            It’s ironic isn’t it? Paul, blind and alone, ends up in Damascus and regains his sight. And for the rest of his life he traveled the known world of the Roman Empire. He encountered storms which sank his ship; he was stranded on islands, run out of towns, beaten, stoned and dumped in jails from Asia Minor to Rome. Not once in any of his travels after Damascus was he ever lost again. His entire remaining life is spent on the road and his sense of direction is perfect, never a day lost. Lost, it seems, is a state of mind.

            After my arrest I spent almost a year confined in the regional jail living, at times, three to a cell. One man would have a mattress on the floor of the cell, a cramped eight by ten concrete block room complete with commode and cold water sink. We were locked in that tiny space ten to twelve hours each day. The rest of the day the dayroom was open. Dayroom is a sterilized name for the common area for all the cells in our pod. Twenty-four cells triple bunked. Seventy-two men moving around a space the size of half a basketball court. Monday through Friday I’d leave the pod and walk two narrow corridors to the adult basic education classroom where I worked as a tutor.

            That pod, those narrow hallways were my whole world for a year. I only saw the outside, only felt fresh air on my face, eight times that entire year. Four times, I was shackled and handcuffed and driven the twenty miles to the rural county courthouse where my trial, was a cause celeb. I noticed very little on those rides, my mind awash in a thousand screaming thoughts about the disaster that was my life.

            Four other days our pod – along with two others – had outdoor rec. Outdoor rec was a blacktopped, open-air, basketball court smack in the middle of the jail building. Every side was three stories of brick and barred windows. You could see the sky, feel the sun, and then mill around with one hundred other inmates. You knew you were still locked up. And because of the time of day – usually mid to late afternoon – the sun was beyond the blacktop area. Shadows from the tops of the jail covered the court; shadows formed stupid, reckless decisions that covered my life.

            It’s funny, but that small, closed in world soon became comfortable. I learned multiple paths to the same location. I became known to inmates in every pod. Each time I‘d leave the confines of my pod and venture out to court an article in the local paper would follow. With each article my status at the jail grew. Each day, as I’d walk out of the pod and down the hallway to class I would hear “Heh, Mr. B, can you look at my paperwork?” And, hands would reach out through the bars with an assortment of legal documents.    

            I saw it all, divorce and custody papers, foreclosure and debt notices, and warrants for every crime imaginable. This was my world, hallways measuring less than the distance around a high school track, artificial light, bars and deputies and the smell of disinfectant trying to kill the smells emanating in the stale air. Still, I knew my way. I was comfortable. My road had become compressed, controlled, and contrived. I didn’t think about the mess I’d made. I only thought about getting from point A to point B.

            August 12, 2009. 6:00 a.m. Breakfast in the pod. I had been at the jail 359 days, almost one full year. My life was completely changed in that year. I had gone from a claims attorney for a property and casualty insurer headquartered in Richmond to a convicted felon early into a fifteen year sentence. I’d pled guilty to six counts, paid over $600,000 in restitution on my sentencing date, signed all my other assets over to my wife (that was the deal I made with my employer: I’ll plead guilty; you let me take care of my wife and kids), and she promptly hit me with divorce papers.

            In one year, I’d gone from first-class airfare and evenings at the Ritz-Carlton to shackles and dirty, worn, threadbare sheets. I’d gone from sixty dollar glasses of Johnnie Walker Blue to tepid water; from fourteen ounce ribeyes, lamb shanks, and seafood alfredo to grayish “breakfast gravy,” instant scrambled eggs, and white bread. I’d gone from the life of the party – a man with dozens of people who would hang on to his every word – to a guy with less than five friends. Hell of a road I was on that year. There was a suicide attempt, prescribed anti-depressants to “help me sleep,” and bi-monthly visits to the State’s forensic psychiatrist to prepare my case for sentencing. One year. I didn’t want to think about moving on. I just wanted to survive, survive in my small world I’d built at the jail.

            6:00 a.m. and the call came. “Pack up. You’re transferring to D.O.C.” DOC, the Virginia Department of Corrections, prison, real prison with real time, with real crime, real despair. Yet, I treated the news with ambivalence. I was scared, but I was also tired, tired of everything my life had become.

            Everything I had fit into a plastic trash bag. The deputy at the jail took my things and dumped them right into the bag. My papers, a Bible, a few pair of underwear and tee shirts, socks, all tossed in and tied off in that clear plastic bag. My clothes from the day I was arrested were handed to me. “Put these on,” he said, and I stripped off the two piece v neck jump top and elastic bottoms in the drab olive green color. There I was with my navy blue blazer, oxford shirt, and khakis from the day my life changed. I put them on and they hung loosely off my waist and shoulders.

            “Lost weight.” The deputy was staring at me. I had. When I was arrested I was embarrassingly overweight, heavier than I’d been my entire adult life. It was too much scotch, too much rich food and it had made me puffy and bloated. A year in hell, depression, despair, and a lack of meaningful exercise and the liquid weight fell off. So did the muscle tone. I was twenty-seven pounds lighter, back to my marathon training weight of 170, but I was gaunt and weak. My clothes, wrinkled from a year balled up in a bag sitting in the jail basement hung from me. Even they were tired and ready to quit.

            The handcuffs and shackles were put on. My bag and I shuffled – that’s the only way to describe it, shuffle, how you walk with shackles. One foot slid forward eighteen inches then, as the chain tightened, the other foot drug forward to the sheriff’s car. Seat belted in, we pulled out into the warm, humid August air and I felt the sun hit my face.

            And as we drove out into the country into the neighboring county and DOC’s inmate receiving prison nestled in the middle of farmland, I watched the homes and lots go by. Everywhere there was green grass and trees in lush, dark summer green. I’d been down that highway so many times traveling with work and I’d never noticed how green everything was.

            For the first time in a year, I was on the road and I had no idea what I faced. I didn’t know where I was going or what lay in store for me. But, instead of fear, I was calm. I’d seen so much, been so far off the right road for so long, this drive felt right. I was going the right way. I’d been lost, but had slowly started to find my way. I didn’t know how long it would take, but I’d find my way back, I vowed.

            I remembered Paul again. Blinded, broken, he found his way. The key I realized was he didn’t find the way. The way found him. That’s where the peace came from. Even as he traveled, even as he faced immense suffering and setbacks, he never despaired. He was on the right road. No matter what he faced, he knew he was going the right way.

            I thought about that as we travelled along those rural Virginia roads. That thought stayed with me when we pulled up to a real prison complete with gun towers and razor wire. And, that thought stayed with my when I was dumped in a sticky, one hundred degree cell with an anti-social twenty-four year old gangbanger starting on a seventy-six year sentence for murder. Each day, as I walked the narrow concrete walkway back to my cell or tier two, and I passed men whose lives were forged on violence and hate, I doubted I could go on. The road was over. I would look below, at the concrete floor, and think there was where my road would end. I’d gone so far off course, thrown away so much, there was nothing left to do. I’d hear a little voice tell me after so many years off track I was finally going the right way. “Don’t be afraid. I know where you’re going.” Funny little voice. But sometimes that’s all we need to see the big picture.

            The road led to a tenth of a mile sandy track outside our building where almost every day I’d go and run. In a prison jumper with Velcro sneakers, in August Virginia heat I’d run round and round that little track under the gaze of a shotgun toting officer just feet behind the fence. It felt right. It felt good. It felt free. The voice was right. There was healing and redemption on that unlikeliest of roads.

            Roads lead so many directions. You can get anywhere really. If you aren’t careful you’ll head out the wrong way. You’ll end up lost and confused. Just like using GPS, there’s a way you can get turned around. And, you may find the road to lead you back isn’t what you expected. It may go through some valleys and broken pavement may be the surface. It won’t matter. You’ll know you’re headed the right way.

            I travelled so many places, took so many roads but never knew where I was going until I admitted I was lost. Now my travels are confined to concrete prison walkways and a gravel track, but I’m going the right way. I found out who I was and who I was meant to be. And the road? I see it clearly in my mind and it’s not defined by this prison.

Waiting

The Lenten season began this morning.  More traditionally observed by Catholics, since my incarceration I have tried to use Lent as a day of fasting and reflection each week.  I spend time trying to figure out what I am called to do.  Who, I ask, does God see when He sees me?  Lent, I’ve come to appreciate, is a time of reflection, confession, and anticipation.  Lent gives way to Easter and in Easter I find hope.

At 3:50 this morning Lent began for me.  During my devotional period I read Psalm 102.  A verse jumped off the page: 

“From heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner….”

That verse has sustained me for much of the last five Lenten seasons as I have dealt with my incarceration and the losses that flowed from that.  Where I am now in that spiritual journey is a long way from where I began, as my life – on that sunny August Monday – collapsed around me.  Over and over those first few days I asked myself why, why was this happening to me?  The truth was, I put all that was happening in motion years earlier when I strayed from the course set out for me.  And, the decisions I made had consequences.  The problem was consequences, I always assumed, bore a rational relationship to our action.  Embezzle and be arrested, you deserve to make restitution, spend some small amount of prison time (maybe), and endure a minimum amount of public exposure.  But, that wasn’t how it played out. 

I was scared, angry, and lonely for longer than I care to admit.  I found myself in a foreign world.  Everything I thought I knew didn’t make sense “inside”.  Right and wrong were blurred as both inmates and officers felt justified in behaving expediently. 

There were a number of people who claimed to be my friends who withdrew from me almost immediately after my arrest.  A few came by the jail for visits.  But, I soon realized they weren’t there to lend support.  I was an animal in a cage.  They looked, left, then told our wide circle of acquaintances how I’d fallen.  I thought of Bob Dylan’s bitter “Positively Fourth Street” on more than one occasion.

“You got a lot of nerve

To say you are my friend

When I was down

You just stood there grinning.”

Almost immediately, I knew my wife would leave me.  I had resigned myself to that fate years earlier.  You know the feeling, when you look at that someone and don’t see back what you crave, what you need.  The divorce took its toll.  I heard a minister remark one day that nothing is more painful than rejection.  It was one of the purest truths I ever heard.

I built up scars.  Trials will do that to you.  I lost hope weekly and somehow found it with a letter, a visit, a story, or a simple prayer.  And I decided I wouldn’t let this place, this experience, define me.  I survived perhaps the worst four months of my life going through DOC’s Receiving center and landed here, a low custody facility with an overwhelming need first for GED tutors and later college tutors.

It was as if God’s hand had directed my journey here.  Slowly, Bible verses I had read dozens of times at the start of my incarceration (in my prior life, I was “too busy” for Bible study) began to make sense.  I understood Deuteronomy 8:2.

            “You shall remember all the ways which the Lord your God hassled you in the wilderness…that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart….”

Five Lenten seasons.  Five years of preparation and reflection.  Five years of waiting.  For a man whose main attribute was impatience, waiting has been a struggle.  My friend DC – no odder pair of friends may exist – told me once he felt for me.  How ironic, a man locked up forty years felt sorry for me. “You know the world out there.  You know what you could be doing.  You know how the system plays and creates different results.  Every day must feel like a month to you.”  He was right.

Prison isn’t’ easy for anyone.  And, I’ve learned no matter how heinous the crime, with few exceptions, most people are redeemable.  But that redemption won’t come from places like this.  Even at a low level facility, prison is a dehumanizing experience.  There is nothing to be gained rehabilitatively by locking a man – or woman – away.  We as a society should stop lying to ourselves about prison being about rehabilitation and re-entry to society.

If we want to punish and break people and subject them to a Thunderdome world of filth, violence, heartbreak, and hopelessness at least be honest and say that’s what we believe.  But, we won’t say that because we’d have to admit this Judeo-Christian nation doesn’t give a damn about the tenets of that theology and we’re no better than anyone else.

But, this is about Lent, and reflection, and anticipation.  As I fasted today I realized there was much to be thankful for in this experience.  For one, things could be much worse.  My prison experience is not even comparable to the experiences some of the men I know have endured.  Nor is it on par with the problems so many face around the world.   I have a wonderful support network – close family and friends and others who hold me up in prayer.  My ex and our sons are doing well, very well in fact.  My parents are healthy and together – fifty eight years this May.

Me?  In small ways day in and day out I seem capable of touching the lives of men in here.  This week, three more of my GED students passed the exam and earned their diplomas.  I’ve been able to use my life experiences – my successes as well as my failures – to help some younger men in here who never had a father.  It’s funny, but many of these kids have become like sons to me.   They have helped fill a void I miss so terribly.

I began this blog telling you I ask myself, who does God see when He sees me.  The answer, I’ve concluded is simple.  He sees one of His children and in God’s eyes each child is precious, each child can be redeemed, no matter how far off the path they wander.

If God could continue to love me, to hold me close even as I drifted farther away, how could I do any less?

I don’t know who reads these postings and it doesn’t matter if you knew the “Old Larry” versus the “New Larry”.  I’ve learned one important lesson the past five years, and it’s a “father” lesson – I will never give up hope in my sons, in my life and in my future.

There is a lot I could write this week about prison.  But, this isn’t the time.  It’s Lent and it’s about anticipation, reflection and waiting.  I’m waiting on Easter and Easter is hope.

 

Dear Tom Wolfe

Dear Mr. Wolfe,

            It’s been over twenty years since I read your first novel, Bonfire of the Vanities. That is, until I re-read it here in prison last week. And I have to tell you, the story made a lot more sense to me now than then.

            Back then, during my first read, I was a young, successful trial attorney, a partner in a small litigation firm in East Tennessee. I was in the middle of a large bank fraud case pitting shareholders of a failed bank against their board members as they sought to recover staggering financial losses after their bank was taken over by the FDIC.

            I picked the book up and read each night to unwind from the day’s proceedings. Scotch in one hand, TV tuned to ESPN, I’d read a few pages and laugh at the travails Sherman McCoy created for himself. My wife was nearly full term with our first child. I’d watch her attempt to lift herself out of a chair, a petite frame with a twenty pound ball strapped to her front, and read your words and think, where does this guy in the white suit come up with this stuff?

            Those days were so long ago. I’m over fifty now, divorced from that young woman, alienated from our two sons, four years into a thirteen year sentence for embezzlement. I read your book again. This time, I didn’t laugh as much. This time, I knew what Sherman McCoy felt. I knew because I’d been there. And I wondered, how did you know what it was like: the arrest, the loss, the shame, despair, and guilt? How did you know and why didn’t I pay attention all those years ago?

            Rationalization. I guess it’s part of the deadly sin of pride, but we rationalize way too much when it comes to our behavior. We know what we’re supposed to do and yet, so often doing the right thing is the furthest thought from our mind. We’re quick to hold others in contempt for their foibles and failing, but ourselves? We kind of give a quick wink.

            I was arrested at my office. For a number of years I’d been living a lie, taking money from work. It was small amounts at first, a thousand here or there. But, as the years progressed the amounts grew. I became like Santa Claus after a while. Any friend, coworker, or family member who needed anything could come to me. And I rationalized away my behavior. After all, I’d tell myself, I was a good employee in every other way. No one worked harder. And, I was active in my church and community. I was keeping our local Meals on Wheels afloat, I’d remind myself, to offset the guilt that was starting to grow in the dark recesses of my mind.

            I re-read Bonfire and came to Sherman’s explanation for his ‘drinker’s insomnia.” He needed to tell his wife what he’d done. Instead, he acted as though all was right in their world. Then, in the middle of the night, he’d awaken. His heart pounding, his mind racing one thousand miles an hour, he would be racked by guilt, and shame, and fear of being caught.

            Those words, that description, was my life. There were the 4:00 a.m. puffy, bloodshot eyes, the six scotches before bed to help me shut down, the paranoia every day at work that “today’s the day” they get me. And, there was the pleading and the deal making with God each morning on my commute. “God, I don’t want to lose my wife and kids; I don’t want to go to prison. Get me out of this. I’m a good man. Please get me out of this.”

            But actions have consequences. As I said, I was arrested at work, denied bond (too many assets, I was deemed a flight risk), I was hauled away to jail. I turned in my navy blue blazer, khaki’s, oxford shirt with Jerry Garcia tie, and Kenneth Cole shoes for a two piece puke green jail jumper (v-neck and elastic waist) with “Jackie Chans” (cheap plastic shower shoes).

            The jail stunk. It smelled of sweat and excrement and rotten food. They threw me in a cell by “reception” (funny choice of words I thought) to “make sure you don’t off yourself.” And every fifteen minutes, in that eight by eight cell with the dirty yellow bulb staying on, an officer came by and said “You alright in there?” I’d say “yeah,” but I wasn’t. I knew it was all gone.

            I thought about that as I read Sherman tell his lawyer, “All I can tell you is that I’m already dead … your ‘self’ is other people, all the people you’re tied to, and it’s only a thread.” Sherman knew so much. He knew what it was like sitting in the cesspool that is a jail. He knew what it was like to defend yourself against men who quite frankly don’t give a shit, who will beat you senseless over a perceived snub or a twenty cent ramen noodle.

            Soon enough you too have to learn not to give a shit. Weakness is death in here, so you lash out and try and become what you’re not capable of being: unempathetic, devoid of compassion, atonement, and kindness. But some of us can’t live like that.

            Somehow, you understood that. Your words, “He ain’t got the heart for being on the wrong side of the law. I don’t care who you are, sometimes in your life you’re gonna be on the wrong side of the law, and some people got the heart for it and some don’t,” rang truer than you may know.

            I realized I didn’t have the heart for it. And, I realized I couldn’t be like most of the men in here. I lost everything: freedom, wife, sons, friends, career, wealth, and for a long time I thought “I’m already dead, my heart just doesn’t know it”. I had a decision to make: quit or fight back. I loved that about Sherman. He too was all set to quit until his “friend” tried to persuade him to leave his building.

            Friends. I knew dozens and dozens of people. I got locked up and all of them, save one small handful, bailed. I decided not to quit. It was the toughest decision of my life and there are days even now when I wonder if I made the right choice. But, I couldn’t, I can’t quit.

            This entire episode has been life changing and it’s taught me a few things. A major life lesson is you find out who you really are, what’s at your core, when you’re put in a place, an environment, like this that is (pardon my crassness) completely fucked up.

            And, you don’t have to be like every other guy going through this. Most of the men in here come from lousy homes, lousy schools, lousy economies. They’re poor, ignorant, and alienated from the American dream. And for all their bravado they quietly acquiesce to their life’s lot. They can’t see beyond this place and the shitty existence they knew before. Prison to them is just another stop on their train to nowhere.

            It’s depressing, but it also makes me angry enough to fight back. I teach, GED prep, college tutoring, and creative writing. Yes, I write. I write blogs about this experience and the complete failure of the criminal justice system. Face it, there’s not “justice” in the system and no “corrections” going on in here. And I write stories about broken people. One think I’ve learned from this is we’re all broken in some way. But, there’s redemption when you come face to face with your brokenness and overcome it.

            I write this letter so you would know that Sherman McCoy matters. His story isn’t too farfetched (just look at the headlines about CIA Director Petreaus!) I’m still not sure how you knew the nuts and bolts of jail or what guilt and shame are like. But, you do and your man Sherman lived it.

            Earlier in this letter I told you my thoughts on rationalization. It’s “the glass house” effect. We are quick to pass judgment on others all the while we cut corners and try and have things “our way.” Sherman wasn’t a bad guy. But, this isn’t about being good or bad. It’s about doing the right thing even when no one is watching.

            Thank you for Sherman McCoy and all the other characters you create with their foibles and biases, desires, and idiosyncrasies. Your books capture life, our sarcastic way we screw up and, hopefully, get it back together and go on.

If Only

Yesterday, another group of men were conferred degrees and certificates by our sponsoring community college.  As it was on prior occasions, the ceremony was joyful and uplifting with the graduates mingling with faculty and family just like graduates in the “real world”.  And, as with other college graduations I’ve attended in here, there were moments for me of bittersweet memories as my mind ran through “If only, Larry”.  More on that later.

The other weekend I was at visitation with my folks.  Every month, they make the ninety mile drive from their home in North Carolina up here.  They are both healthy, late-seventies people, and that gives me hope for a lot of years post prison.  Our conversations run the gamut of what’s going on with whom, and where people are.  Invariably, my mom will make an aside about my former church and the minister there.  At my worst, as I sat in the Henrico County Jail trying to find any reason to go on, he refused to come see me.

For a long time that treatment – by people I worshiped with and helped – gnawed at me.  How can my own minister turn his back on me?  2012 was an epiphanal year in my life.  And a fair number of issues and emotional baggage I’d been carting around slowly began to go away.  Things that had seemed to hurt me so deeply didn’t really matter too much.  In fact, I began to appreciate the pain they caused.  Call it rationalization, or maturity, or salvation, but I began to understand what the Apostle Paul meant when during his imprisonment he wrote “And in all things God works for the good of those who love Him according to His purposes.”

Paul was a heck of a writer and his words struck at the mystery that is faith in times of deep trouble.  Those words – I recited that verse literally dozens of times on my worst days as I tried to will myself into believing nothing was happening that God in His infinite power and grace couldn’t work out for my benefit.

I have a dear friend, an Episcopal minister, who regularly visited me at the jail and the receiving unit.  He has provided counsel, and support – even getting his congregation involved in my circumstances, and has listened during my Job-like periods when nothing made sense.  He stayed in touch, writing and visiting me even while undergoing chemotherapy.  His friendship is a true blessing in my life.  Here’s the irony.  I never would have met Gary had it not been for my own minister’s snub.  Another friend, one of Gary’s parishioners, asked him to come see me after my own church rejected me.  “If only”.  Somehow, I think Paul is smiling and saying, “Larry finally gets it.”

Back to college graduation – I sat there and watched our students march in and I remembered I missed my older son’s college graduation.  A wave of emotion – sadness, guilt, loneliness – hit me.  “If only”, I thought, and I felt myself growing back into the guy who struggled so long in here. I started thinking about Paul’s words.

The ceremony ended and I was eating with a few friends and two college faculty members when one of our graduates came up.  “Larry, my parents want to meet you.”  I walked over with him and said hello.  An elderly black woman with a cane stepped up, then threw her arms around me.  “Thank you”, she said.  “You helped our son so much.  You answered our prayers.”

Funny thing, that same reaction happened eight or nine times after that as grad after grad got me and introduced me to parents, grandparents, spouses, children.  “This is the guy who got me through my academic classes.”

I thought about Joseph in Egypt.  Sold into slavery, sent to prison, forgotten and then saves Egypt during a terrible drought.  Through divine intervention he is reunited with his brothers who fear for their lives.  Joseph, in one of the Bible’s great lines of mercy forgives his brothers.  “You meant to harm me, but God meant it for good.”

“If only.”  Sometimes we focus too much on the regret and not on the blessing.  I couldn’t help but think about Paul, and our graduates and their families, and my prison journey.  “In all things God works for the good….”  Even in embezzlement convictions, incarceration, and divorce that message applies.

 

Sentencing (or “The Turd in the Punchbowl” Part 1)

I’ve written numerous times in this blog about sentencing in Virginia and about the systematic failure of “truth in sentencing” as implemented in the Commonwealth. But, people are slow to notice it and even slower to admit it and do something about it.  Perhaps that’s just human nature.  We want to believe our laws are fair.  We want to have easy, rational explanations for everything.  So, politicians tell us truth in sentencing reform was long overdue and has directly led to lower crime rates and more uniform (albeit substantially longer) sentences.  “Great!” You say.  All is right with the world.  “You go over to the punchbowl to lift a celebratory toast to the power of our way of life, good old representative democracy, and you run face first into reality:  someone spiked the punch with a turd and it’s floating in the bowl for all the world to see.

“Conventional wisdom” – lovely term isn’t it – tries to correlate lower crime rates with tougher sentencing.  However, study after study (both university and Department of Justice) find there is no such correlation.  No one ever avoided committing a crime because of the perceived risk of lengthy incarceration.  In fact, what all this “get tough” approach may have done is make us a nation of convicts.

It was recently reported that over 23% of all young people between the ages of 18 and 24 will have arrest records.  The United States currently has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world (number behind bars per 100,000) and the largest prison population.  We exceed even China and the combined totals of North Korea, Iran, Syria and all the other “terror states”.  Combining federal and state prisons and jails there are approximately 2.5 million people behind bars.  That’s almost one percent of the nation’s population.  Add to that the eight million plus who have felony convictions (a sizeable number of whom are under “community corrections”, i.e. probation or parole).  That’s three percent of America.  Not since England figured out shipping all their convicts to Australia would solve their prison problem, has one nation had such a large percentage of felons.

“Truth in Sentencing” reform was supposed to take away disparity in sentences.  It didn’t matter where in Virginia (or any state for that matter; they all adopted the “truth in sentencing” commission recommendations) you committed your offense, penalties would be the same.  Great concept, only it didn’t work.

This week the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on a 72 year old Richmond attorney who was sentenced to three years for embezzling in excess of $1 million from individuals during his handling of real estate transactions since 2005.  He made no restitution.  His attorney – coincidentally the same lawyer who handled my case – had asked for a suspended sentence.  The paper reported the defendant “cooperated fully” and “expressed deep regret”.  The Henrico County Circuit Judge presiding over his case (coincidentally, I was held in the Henrico county Jail after being denied bond.  I was deemed a flight risk.  He wasn’t.) gave the three year term as a “fair punishment” for his wrongdoing.

My case was heard less than twenty miles west.  I embezzled slightly over $2 million and made immediate restitution of almost $600,000.  The Commonwealth Attorney noted my “complete cooperation” (his words at my sentencing) and the state’s own forensic psychiatrist, in a report to the court, indicated I was profoundly remorseful and that prison time would serve neither a punitive nor rehabilitative purpose.  So what did the Judge in my case do?  He gave me fifteen years.

I don’t begrudge the Henrico defendant getting three years.  I don’t begrudge the Norfolk bookkeeper being sentenced to four years in a $2.1 million embezzlement case.  I do question the integrity of the system and I do submit that my sentence was excessive and unjust and shows the hypocrisy of “truth in sentencing”.  You will never hear me say I didn’t deserve to be incarcerated.  In fact, I will freely admit sending me to prison was justified – not given other similarly situated embezzlement defendants or the average sentence for child sex abusers.

And then there is GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul.  Paul reminds me of the old, cranky guy in my neighborhood when I was growing up. He was regimented and serious about everything.  He’d give stern warnings about things and we’d laugh and tell ourselves he was crazy.  As we aged we all realized he was wiser than any of us hoped to be.

On the eve of last week’s New Hampshire primary, Paul – during a candidates’ debate – was asked by Moderator George Stephanopoulos about questions that had recently surfaced concerning alleged racist comments in a 1980’s newsletter that bore his name.
As USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham noted in an op-ed piece last Wednesday (1/11/2012), Paul said questions about what he wrote or knew about that long ago diverts attention away from the “true racism” in the nation’s judicial system that “disproportionately imprisons blacks for their involvement in crimes…”  The questioner, the other candidates, the audience itself sat in numbed silence.  Congressman Paul had pointed out the turd in the punch bowl.

In 2010, 69% of all people arrested in the United States were white.  Blacks accounted for 28% of the arrests.  These percentages were relatively constant the entire decade.  During the same ten year period, approximately twice as many whites as blacks were arrested each year for drug crimes.  Despite this, Virginia’s inmate population is disproportionately black and poor.  I learned early on I was in the minority in more ways than one.  I’m white, which means I make up only about 35% of the inmate population.  And of the white men locked up, most are in for sex offenses, primarily child sex crimes and child pornography (and almost all are serving substantially shorter sentences than me).

That disparity in incarceration rates shows a lack of justice in the criminal justice system.  As I’ve written over and over in this blog, America’s criminal justice system, Virginia’s criminal justice system, is badly flawed and in need of dramatic overhaul.

You want real justice; begin with admitting there’s a problem.  Don’t just silently stand by while the turd floats in the punchbowl.  It’s time for change, real systematic change:  colorblind sentences that actually bring about restorative justices, and prisons – when needed – where actual rehabilitation and restoration takes place.

Lying About Justice

There are consequences for your behavior.  “We tell our kids that.  Hell, Judges say the same thing when they sentence you (my Judge said “I don’t know which man is before me, the one who did so much good in the community or the one who stole...”).  Why is it then, in the name of “justice” that we tolerate public officials lying about crime, sentences and public safety?  Isn’t it time our elected officials (and those hired to manage public agencies) are held to the same standards they so self-righteously espouse?  This week that issue came to mind as I read about Virginia Governor McDonnell’s decision to close Mecklenburg Corrections Center and Judge Timothy Sanner’s sentencing of former Goochland Treasurer Brenda Grubbs for her guilty plea to embezzling in excess of $200,000.

As a matter of self-disclosure, I was sentenced by Judge Sanner.  As I’ve detailed numerous times in the pages of this blog, I volunteered all information about my case, cooperated fully with the prosecution and pled guilty to six counts (five embezzlement and one forgery of public record).  Shortly before my sentencing hearing began, a young man appeared for his sentencing.  This early twenties male was in jail for a third DUI.  The third arrest involved an accident – his friend was killed.  This young man was entered in an alcohol treatment program at the jail.  The Judge, noting he’d completed twelve of eighteen months of the program gave this young man only the remaining six months to complete the program.

I don’t begrudge a lenient sentence to this young man.  Prison wouldn’t bring back his dead friend, nor is prison the place to address an obvious alcohol problem, but how do you sentence a man who has caused a death to a total of 18 months and turn around and sentence another man to 15 years for embezzling from a profitable company (which, coincidentally, is politically well connected in your jurisdiction)?

Brenda Grubbs was the Treasurer of Goochland County.  Married for 30 plus years to a local farmer, Ms. Grubbs embezzled over $200,000 from county funds while carrying out a romantic, internet liaison with a Nigerian con artist.  Sanner allowed Ms. Grubbs out on bond while her case was pending (a luxury I was not afforded).  Then came sentencing day.  Both her husband (who has stood by her) and minister testified on her behalf.

A request was made to allow her to report after the holidays and begin serving her four year imposed sentence.  The Judge rejected the request.  Why?  Because, Judge Sanner noted “defendant is deeply depressed and in need of mental health services”.  Sending her to prison will not address her mental health issues.  In fact, sending her to prison will hurt her mental health.

If a primary purpose of the criminal justice system is the creation of remorse, then the mere process – in cases such as Ms. Grubbs and mine – is enough to create the desired results.  The problem with pronouncement from the bench such as those made by Judge Sanner is they are completely devoid of truth.  He doesn’t have the guts to say “I want to punish you, ruin your family, make you a financial drain on the state because I can.”  Instead he says some quasi – Solomonese statement about justice.

Here’s a message for Judge Sanner and the others who hand down sentences:  justice does not exist in a vacuum.  Justice always includes mercy.  No Judge should serve on the bench without spending a week in the “corrections” system to understand the “consequences” of their decisions.  And, spare us the moral platitudes from the bench.  If morals and righteous behavior were pre-requisites to serving as a judge, there’d be nothing but vacancies.

And then there is the McDonnell Administration announcing the closing of the prison in Mecklenburg County.  The real reason for the closing – Pennsylvania removing 1,000 inmates from Virginia’s Green Rock Prison and cancelling the $20 million annual lease – was correctly set out in the opening sentence.  But then, McDonnell’s spokespeople veered off into the great sea of subterfuge and misstatement.

Closing Mecklenburg and sending those inmates to Green Rock “will save approximately $10,000 per inmate on an annual basis”; the Governor said (“currently it costs $29,562 per year, per inmate housed at Mecklenburg; that cost will shrink to $19,213 at Green Rock”).  “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”  Virginia’s Department of Corrections holds approximately 39,000 inmates (two-thirds of whom are classified as “low custody”).  DOC’s budget is just north of $1 billion.  That equals a per inmate cost of $25,564 per year.  The old expression “numbers don’t lie, but liars use numbers” seems to have been created by governmental bureaucrats to justify their complete lack of cost efficiency and effectiveness and candor.

Here are the facts:  it costs money, lots of money to operate and maintain a prison.  It is labor intensive.  The reason Green Rock wasn’t being used, the reason James River, Brunswick and Southampton were closed (along with a number of other facilities) was simply due to cost.  On average, it takes $25 million annually to operate a 1,000 bed prison in Virginia.  That the Commonwealth is now – by their own acknowledgement – at 137% of adequate bed capacity in corrections is just further evidence of the failure and lies perpetrated in the name of public safety.

Governor McDonnell stated, “In these difficult times, it is incumbent upon DOC and state government to ensure that public safety continues to be paramount and, while doing so, to be the best stewards of taxpayer’s money.”

Nice words Governor.  Problem is, prisons do not ensure public safety.  And, as I have repeatedly documented in the pages of this blog, DOC spending is a sinking hole.  Money doesn’t go for programs to end recidivism.  Money doesn’t even go to create secure facilities.  Virginia’s prisons are rife with crime, violence, disease, dishonest officers and administrators, and a glaring lack of creative programs and hope.

Governor McDonnell’s closing announcement was nothing but his political attempt to dress up the economic tsunami striking Virginia after years of lies about its public safety and corrections “successes”.

I broke the law.  I was told there were consequences for my actions.  Fair enough.  Its high time Judges and Governors are held to the same standard.

Dear Senator Webb

Dear Senator Webb:

I read the recent article from the Daily Beast about your continuing efforts to reform this nation’s broken criminal justice system (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/11/jim-webb-s-criminal-justice-crusade.html ).   As an incarcerated person, currently three years into a fifteen year sentence for embezzlement, I applaud your work.  I speak for tens of thousands of men and women in my situation, and our families and friends, who pray for your endeavors success.  America cannot continue to incarcerate millions of people for billions of dollars especially when, for the vast majority of us being held, our crimes are nonviolent.  We pose no threat to society.

My situation, while somewhat unique, never the less points out the tremendous waste of resources being expended to “punish” me.  I am a former attorney; I freely acknowledge that over twelve years I embezzled over $2 million from my employer.  But that behavior came at a terrible price.  I was depressed, aware of my wrongdoing.  When confronted by my employer I freely admitted my thefts.  I cooperated fully with the investigation, pled guilty to all counts presented and made a significant restitution payment prior to sentencing.

The Court, instead of showing me mercy, sentenced me to serve six consecutive 2 ½ year sentences.  Because of Virginia’s short-sighted “abolishment of parole” legislation passed in 1995, I will serve thirteen years of my sentence.

What have been the results?  For one, the taxpayers of Virginia are spending in excess of $25,000 a year to house me in a low level facility.  My “treatment” plan indicates I am at low risk to return to prison (in other words I am not a recidivism risk).  Because of my educational background (BA and JD degrees) there are no programs geared toward my rehabilitation.  Because of my age (currently 52), it is highly unlikely I will be able to make full restitution after my currently set release date. As a result of my lengthy sentence, my marriage of 27 years has ended.  I am estranged from my two sons.

What I have witnessed and documented over these past three years is appalling.  Virginia’s prison system is hopelessly overcrowded, understaffed and unable to provide meaningful rehabilitative programs for the vast majority of incarcerated offenders.  As my blog has documented, prisons are still places of great violence and degradation.  Simply put, there is no “correction” being accomplished in the department of corrections.  For the vast majority of inmates, prison is a hopeless existence.  Were this only Virginia’s problem it would be bad enough.  That these same problems exist in every state and the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a stain on this nation’s character.

Since my incarceration began, I have devoted myself to helping my fellow inmates.   I serve as an academic tutor for both adult basic education students and college student earning their degrees in this institution’s “campus behind walls”.  I help the men with grievances and legal questions.  And mostly, because of my life experiences, education and age, I serve as a mentor and sounding board to men who have been abandoned, neglected and counted out.  In a strange turn of events, this experience has strengthened my faith.  I cannot undo the wrong I committed but I can work to improve the chances these men – my fellow inmates – have to succeed.

Senator Webb, there is so much wrong with the current operation of America’s prisons.  The conditions the United States Supreme Court found in the California corrections system (Brown v. Plata) exist in every state.  America needs real prison reform:

1.    Meaningful earned good time credit for rehabilitation efforts by inmates must be created.

2.    Alternative sentencing rather than incarceration must be utilized.

3.    Prisons must be places of treatment and rehabilitation, not places of violence, filth and degradation.

ar I urge you to continue your push for criminal justice reform.  I also ask that you come to Lunenburg, speak with me and the other inmates.  I believe you will see that the vast majority of us can leave here sooner, rather than later, and be productive, contributing members of society if only given a chance.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

I watched with mixed emotions as the country went through the seizures of defaulting on the national debt.  Part of me was deeply amused.  Every cable news outlet had their “breaking news” and a countdown clock to debt Armageddon.  Both parties – and the president as well – played simple, false sound bites.  The “Tea Party” pushed demagoguery to a new limit.  Ah America, “God shed His grace on thee.”  And Virginia’s Governor?  He did more creative bookkeeping than I did to land myself in prison.

Governor McDonnell touted a $500 million surplus, except, he forgot to tell people he failed to meet the payment requirements to the Virginia Retirement System.  There is no surplus.  VRS is almost $17 billion underfunded and the Commonwealth still has an IOU outstanding to VRS for the prior year’s budget debacle.  And McDonnell has the brass set to go on CNN as a “possible VP” nominee and tout Virginia’s economic well-being.

A pox on both their houses!  As “The Economist” noted in an OpEd piece on March 19, 2011: 

“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea partiers, big government is not just the fault of the self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians.  Conservative voters…have kept on demanding the state do more…the right has built prisons, announced wars on drugs and terror, and indulged generals, farmers, and policemen…”

What we have seen in the recent economic unraveling is that everything costs.  And the bill for America’s love affair with “tough on crime” mass incarceration policy has come due.  Governor McDonnell can lead or he can step aside.  But, the time for change is now.

As states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Kentucky have realized, there are more effective and less expensive ways to handle most non-violent offenders.  These states are employing alternatives to sending someone convicted of a crime to prison.  They utilize home incarceration and day center reporting versus prison.

This isn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” approach.  Conservatives such as former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, drug czar William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist are pushing for prison reform.

Where is Virginia in this discussion?  Not even involved.  Virginia will spend $25,000 to keep me housed in a low level facility this year and the costs continue to climb.  I am unable to pay restitution for my embezzlement while in here; I do not pay taxes; I do not help raise my youngest son.  Three years I’ve spent behind bars.  If Bob McDonnell was really the politician he claims to be, he’d look at my situation and the thousands like it.  He’d let us “do our time” outside the walls; working, making restitution, being productive citizens.

As the "Sentencing Project" reported recently, lawmakers in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York adopted significant policy changes to reduce prison populations.

“In each of these state a range of policy changes were adopted, including sentencing reforms, alternatives for ‘prison-bound’ people, reducing time served in prison, addressing parole release rates and reducing revocations”

23 states have made significant changes in the way sentences are handed out and the length of time an inmate serves – Virginia is not one of those 23.

Bob McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly can make a difference.  $1 billion a year to house 40,000 inmates is enough reason to try.  They need to enact a real “earned good time credit” system that aggressively rewards inmates who seek to change and improve.  Early release should not just be a goal, but the mission of corrections.

Virginia can no longer afford to do nothing.  Virginia needs real solutions, not “creative” accounting.  The economic realities that showed their true colors this summer prove that government must make smart choices.  No longer can the U.S. with 5 percent of the world’s population, keep 25 percent of the world’s inmates behind bars.

Perhaps Governor McDonnell will finally get it.

The Boxer

There’s been a Simon & Garfunkel song that has been rolling through my mind the last week.  Two week’s after 9/11, Paul Simon, alone on a stage with just his guitar sang “The Boxer” to a hushed Saturday Night Live audience.  It’s a song about being pummeled and beaten down, yet finding the strength to stand back up.

“In a clearing stands a boxer

A fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every blow that layed him down
Or cut him til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving
But the fighter still remained…”

Three nights ago EL, a young college student, was called to the watch commander’s office at 1:00 am.  The Captain on duty informed him his mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly earlier that evening.  He was allowed to make a collect call to his sister and then requested that he be placed in the hole for a few hours – to grieve – because you don’t cry in prison around other inmates.  He returned later in the day to attend class.  He’s not allowed to attend the funeral.

“Li la Li
Li La Li Li Li La Li”

What makes us keep trying, keep hoping, keep believing when the rational part of our mind, when everyone around us tells us it’s hopeless?  I think often about Dr. Viktor Frankl’s thoughts in “Man’s Search for Meaning”.  There he was confided to a concentration camp, being starved, witnessing the worst in humanity because he “broke the law” (we forget, yet Dr. King pointed it out in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, the actions of the Nazis were carried out according to properly passed laws).  He was sustained by the memories of his wife and their life together.  He would not learn until after the war that his wife had been executed early after their arrest and separation.

I live amongst criminals.  With few exceptions, (Big S being the only guy who is factually innocent) the vast majority of men here broke the law.  But, for an equally vast number, the punishment bears no relationship to the crime.  Yet for the vast majority of these men, they remain hopeful.  They believe something better will come to them.

The writer H. Jackson Browne, Jr. wrote:  “Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.”

When Paul Simon performed his song, New York City and the country were still in a state of shock.  Where once stood the trade centers, there was a ten story pile of smoldering rubble.  The death toll was still not calculated “but the fighter still remained”.

I love that line.  I love the image it creates.  Everyone one of us bears scars of hurt and shame.  We all feel pain.  We all suffer loss.  At times, we all want to give up and quit.  But, like Simon’s boxer, we stand back up battered and bruised and vow to fight on.

This blog isn’t about anything in particular that occurred.  It may have come about over the past few weeks as a group of students I hadn’t worked with before started coming to me for help.  As I worked with these guys invariably one of them would ask “Is it true you haven’t heard from your kids?” or “Your wife divorced you?” or “You really got fifteen years for embezzlement?”  Maybe it was the two officers last weekend reminding me how many lies were printed about me in the paper after my arrest and then officer H saying “you’re a decent guy; you deserved better”.

I asked DC, a great boxer in his teens, if he was ever put on the canvas.

“Yeah”, he said.  “Guy beat me senseless and I hit the deck.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Got up.  Can’t stay down.  No matter how bad it hurt, I couldn’t let ‘em beat me.”

Couldn’t let ‘em beat me.  The fighter still remained…

POSTSCRIPT:  In an ironic twist, USA Today columnist Craig Wilson wrote a piece two days after I penned this on the same topic.  Aptly titled “You can’t turn back now…” it included the following lines from poet Annie Johnson Flint:

“Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life.

Where, in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back.
There is no other way but through?”

Wilson then concludes:  “Getting down that path isn’t always easy.  We stumble.  We fall.  But we get up and march on.”

Amen to that.

Consider This

Last week the Virginia General Assembly once again failed to act on prison reform. A bill before it granting ten additional earned good time days for those inmates participating in educational, vocational or treatment programs failed in committee. Under the guise of being “tough on crime”, the legislature again failed the citizens of the Commonwealth.



Consider the following from Justice Fellowship (www.justicefellowship.org):


“We seek to change our criminal justice system at every level so that it reflects the principles of restorative justice found in the Bible . . .


Sentencing practices that rely excessively or exclusively on incarceration harm our communities and sap government funds. Prisons are appropriate for many violent offenders. However, prison is not always the best way to make us safe . . . there is only a limited and diminishing relationship between incarceration and reduced crime rates. Rather than encouraging criminals to become peaceful, productive citizens, prison culture often has the opposite effect, operating as a graduate school for crime. . .


Good time credit opportunities should be increased and truth in sentencing laws should be reformed to reduce the time an offender must be in prison before he or she is eligible for parole.”


Makes a lot of sense. It’s a shame that Virginia’s elected representatives don’t.


Then, these statistics from the recent symposium on Mass Incarceration held at George Mason University:


Between 1987 and 2007 correction spending increased 127%. In the same time period higher education spending only increased 21%. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, 756 per 100,000. Three fifths of the world has rates below 150 per 100,000.


The combined inmate population of the top 35 European countries is a million less than the inmate population here:


1:100 Adults are incarcerated


1:25 18-65 year olds are on probation or parole


1:5 American adults have a criminal record


3.5:100 Juveniles 11-17 years old are in the juvenile justice system.


According to a study by Cullen, Nagin and Johnston (2009), “Incarceration has no impact on recidivism rates, but may in fact cause future criminal behavior.”


What does it all mean? As one “on the inside” I can tell you incarceration is necessary. However, the length of sentences and the disparity in sentences must be changed.


I don’t disagree that I should have been incarcerated. But, what number of years is a reasonable sentence for the crime of embezzlement? I keep a file full of embezzlement cases. Not one sentence handed down was as severe as mine. The closest, former Virginia Finance Director John W. Forbes, embezzled $4.1 million from a state commission. He made no restitution at trial. His sentence: 10 years, well below my sentence.


In prison, I am a drag on society. I pay neither taxes nor my remaining restitution. It costs $25,000 per year to keep me here.


It didn’t take long in here to realize I didn’t want this. Nothing is worth my loss of freedom. The price I paid was high.


It is painfully clear Virginia needs to restore parole and give inmates an opportunity to rehabilitate and earn early release.


The system is neither economically viable nor morally justifiable. It’s worth considering.